The Ask and the Answer (36 page)

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Two people on horseback. Two people in shiny new uniforms, riding their horses. One of them talking, gesturing with his hands.

Laughing. Smiling.

The other keeping his eyes on his horse, but riding along to work.

Riding along to his Job at the Office of the Ask. In a uniform with a shiny A on the shoulder. Todd.
My
Todd.

Riding next to Davy Prentiss.

Riding to work with the man who shot me.

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31 NUMBERS AND LETTERS

***

[TODD]

THE DAYS KEEP PASSING. They keep getting worse.

"All
of em?" Davy asks, his Noise ringing with badly hidden alarm. "Every single one?"

"This is a vote of confidence, David," the Mayor says, standing with us at the door of the stables while our horses are made ready for the day's work. "You and Todd did such an excellent job with permanently identifying the female prisoners, who else would I want to be in charge of expanding the program?"

I don't say nothing, not even acknowledging Davy's looks at me. His Noise is confused with the pink of his pa's praise.

But then there's also his thoughts about banding all the women.

Every single one.

Cuz banding the ones in the Office of the Ask was even worse than we thought.

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"They keep leaving," the Mayor says. "In the dead of night, they slip away and cast their lot with the terrorists."

Davy's watching Deadfall get saddled in a small paddock, his Noise clanking with the faces of the women who get banded, the cries of pain they make.

The words they speak to us.

"And if they keep getting out," the Mayor says, "they obviously keep getting in, too."

He means the bombs. One every night for the past two weeks nearly, so many they must be increasing for a reason, they must be leading up to something bigger, and no women have been caught planting 'em except once when a bomb blew up while the woman was still putting it in place. They didn't find much left of her except bits of clothing and flesh.

I close my eyes when I think of it.

Feeling nothing, taking nothing in.

(was it her?)

Feeling
nothing.

"You want us to number
all
the women," Davy says again quietly, looking away from his pa.

"I've said it before," the Mayor sighs.
"Every
woman is part of the Answer, if only because she is a woman and therefore sympathetic to other women."

The groomsmen bring Angharrad into a nearby paddock. She sticks her head over the rail to bump me with her nose.
Todd
, she says.

"They'll resist," I say, stroking her head. "The men won't like it neither."

"Ah, yes," says the Mayor. "You missed yesterday's rally, didn't you?"

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Davy and I look at each other. We were at work all day yesterday and didn't hear nothing bout no rally.

"I spoke to the men of New Prentisstown," the Mayor says. "Man to man. I explained to them the threat the Answer poses us and how this is the next prudent step forward to ensure safety for all." He rubs a hand down Angharrad's neck. I try and hide how prickly my Noise gets at the sight. "I encountered no resistance."

"There weren't no women at this rally," I say, "were there?"

He turns to me. "I wouldn't want to encourage the enemy among us, now would I?"

"But there's effing
thousands
of em!" Davy says. "Banding 'em all will take forever."

"There will be other teams working, David," the Mayor says calmly, making sure he's got his son's full attenshun. "But I'm sure the two of you will outwork any of them."

Davy's Noise perks up a bit at this. "You bet we will, Pa," he says.

He looks at me, tho.

And there's worry there.

I stroke Angharrad's nose again. The groomsmen bring out Morpeth, freshly brushed and shiny with oil.
Submit,
he says.

"If you're worried," the Mayor says, taking Morpeth's reins. "Ask yourselves this." He hoists himself up in the saddle in one smooth movement, like he's made of liquid. He looks down at us.

"Why would any innocent woman object to being identified?"

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***

"You won't get away with this," the woman says, her voice almost steady.

Mr. Hammar cocks his rifle behind us and aims it at her head.

"You blind?" Davy says to the woman, voice a little too squeaky. "I'm getting away with it
right now."
Mr. Hammar laughs.

Davy twists the bolting tool with a hard turn. The band snaps into the woman's skin halfway up her forearm. She calls out, grabbing the band and falling forward, catching herself on the floor with her unhanded arm. She stops there a minute, panting.

Her hair is pulled back into a severe knot, blondy and brown mixed together, like the wire filaments in the back of a vid player. There's a small patch on the back where the hair is gray, all growing together, a river across a dusty land.

I stare at the gray patch, letting my eyes blur a little.

I am the Circle and the Circle is me.

"Get up," Davy says to the woman. "So the healers can treat you." He looks back at the line of women staring at us down the hall to the front of the dormitory, waiting their turn.

"The boy said get up," Mr. Hammar says, waving his rifle.

"We don't need you here," Davy snaps, his voice tight. "We're doing just fine without no babysitter."

"I ain't babysitting," Mr. Hammar smiles. "I'm protecting." The woman stands, her eyes on me.

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My own expresshun is dead, removed, not here if it don't have to be.

I am the Circle and the Circle is me.

"Where's your heart?" she asks. "Where is your heart if you can do these things?" And then she turns to where the healers, who we've already banded, wait to give her treatment.

I watch her go.

I don't know her name.

Her number, tho, is 1484.

"1485!" Davy calls out.

The next woman in line steps forward.

We spend the day riding from one women's dormitory to another, getting thru almost three hundred bands, much faster than we ever did the Spackle. We start for home when the sun begins to set, as New Prentisstown turns its thoughts to curfew.

We ain't saying much.

"What a day, eh, pigpiss?" Davy says, after a while. I don't say nothing but he don't want an answer. "They'll be all right," he says. "They got the healers to take away the pain and stuff."
Clop, clop,
along we go. I hear what he's thinking. Dusk is falling. I can't see his face. Maybe that's why he ain't covering it up. "When they cry, tho," he says. I keep quiet.

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"Ain't you got nothing to say?" Davy's voice gets a little harder. "All silent now, like you don't wanna talk no more, like I ain't worth talking to."

His Noise starts to crackle.

"Not like I got anyone
else
to talk to, pigpiss. Not like I got any
choice
in the situashun. Not like no matter what I effing
do
can I get moved up for it, given the good work, the
fighting
work. All that stupid Spackle babysitting crap. Then we turn right around and do the same thing to the women. And for what? For
what?"

His voice gets low.

"So they can cry at us," he says. "So they can look at us like we ain't even human."

"We ain't," I say, surprised to find I said it out loud.

"Yeah, that's the new you, ain't it?" he says, sneering. "All Mister No-Feeling-I-Am-The-Circle Tough Guy. You'd put a bullet thru yer own
ma's
head if Pa told you to."

I don't say nothing but I grind my teeth together.

Davy's quiet for a minute, too. Then he says, "Sorry."

Then he says, "Sorry, Todd," using my name.

Then he says, "What the hell am
I
saying sorry for? Yer the stupid can't-read pigpiss all getting on my pa's good side. Who cares about you?"

I still don't say nothing and
clop, clop,
along we go.

"Forward," Angharrad neighs to Deadfall, who nickers back, "Forward."

Forward,
I hear in her Noise and then B
oy colt, Todd.

"Angharrad," I whisper twixt her ears. "Todd?" Davy says.

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"Yeah?" I say.

I hear him breathe out thru his nose. "Nothing." Then he changes his mind. "How d you
do
it?"

"Do what?"

I see him shrug in the dusk. "Be so calm bout it all. Be so, I don't know,
unfeeling.
I mean ..." He drifts off and says, almost too quietly to hear, one more time, "When they cry."

I don't say nothing cuz how can I help him? How can he not know about
The Circle
unless his pa don't want him to?

"I
do
know," he says, "but I tried that crap and it don't work for me and he won't--"

He stops abruptly, like he's said too much.

"Ah, screw it," he says.

We keep riding, letting the
ROAR
New Prentisstown

enfold us as we enter the main part of town, the horses calling their orders to each other, reminding theirselves of who they are.

"Yer the only friend I got, pigpiss," Davy finally says. "Ain't that the biggest tragedy you ever heard?"

"Tiring day?" Mayor Ledger says to me when I come into our cell. His voice is oddly light and he keeps his eyes on me.

"What do you care?" I sling my bag on the floor and flop down on the bed without taking my uniform off.

"I suppose it must be exhausting torturing women all day."

I blink in surprise. "I don't torture 'em," I growl. "You shut yer mouth about that."

"No, of
course
you don't torture them. What was I

371

thinking? You just strap a corrosive metal band into their skin that can never be removed without them bleeding to death. How could that possibly be construed as
torture"?"

"Hey!" I sit up. "We do it fast and without fuss. There are lots of ways to make it worse and we don't do that. If it's gotta be done, then it's best that it's done by
us."

He crosses his arms, his voice still light. "That excuse going to help you sleep tonight?"

My Noise roars up. "Oh, yeah?" I snap. "Was that you the Mayor didn't hear shouting at the rally yesterday? Was that you who weren't making that brave stand against him?"

His face goes stormy and I hear a flash of gray resentment in his Noise. "And get shot?" he says. "Or dragged away to be Asked? How would that help anything?"

"And that's what yer doing?" I say.
"Helping?"

He don't say nothing to that, just turns to look out one of the windows, out over the few lights that come on only in essenshul places, out over the
ROAR
of a town wondering when the Answer are gonna make their big move and from where and how bad it'll be and who's gonna save 'em.

My Noise is raised and red. I close my eyes and take in a deep, deep breath.

I am the Circle and the Circle is me.

Feeling nothing, taking nothing in.

"They were getting used to him again," Mayor Ledger says out the window. "They were uniting behind him because what're a few curfews against being blown up? But this is a tactical mistake."

I open my eyes at "tactical" cuz it seems a weird word to choose.

372

"The men are terrified now," he's still saying. "Terrified they're going to be next." He looks down at his own forearm, rubbing a spot where a band might go. "Politically, he's made a mistake."

I squint at him. "What do you care if he's made a mistake?" I ask. "Whose side are you on?"

He turns to me as if I've insulted him, which I guess I have. "The
town's,"
he steams. "Whose side are you on, Todd Hewitt?"

There's a knock on the door.

"Saved by the dinner bell," Mayor Ledger says.

"The dinner bell don't knock," I say, getting to my feet. I unlock the door with my key
ker-thunk
and open it.

It's Davy.

He don't say nothing at first, just looks nervous, eyes here and there. I figure there's a problem at the dormitories so I sigh and move back to my bed to get my few things. I ain't even had time to get my boots off.

"It'll take a minute," I say to him. "Angharrad'll still be eating. She won't like being saddled up again so soon."

He still ain't said nothing so I turn to look at him. He's still nervous, not meeting my eye.
"What?"
I say.

He chews on his upper lip and all I can see in his Noise is embarrassment and asking marks and anger at Mayor Ledger being there and more asking marks and there behind it all, a weird strong feeling, almost guilty, almost
clear-Then
he covers it up fast and the anger and embarrassment come foremost.